


rules

by incoffeespoons



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M, Vague introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-19
Updated: 2012-08-19
Packaged: 2017-11-12 11:59:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/490717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incoffeespoons/pseuds/incoffeespoons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony can't sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	rules

Bruce had rules for his television, rules that had accrued over time - snowballed, gaining momentum in an uncontrollable manner that was, curiously, an antithesis of the control the rules offered him. The volume had to be on an odd number - usually fifteen, eleven if it was late at night, seventeen if it was a particularly good programme. If he could not remember the number of a channel he could not key in a number that was in the vague ballpark and then work from there: he had to cycle through all of the channels until he arrived at where he wanted to be, as a kind of penance. He was used to making up such rules; having a lack of structure in most areas of one's life made gaining a sense of ownership over the others a prospect that seemed almost necessary. 

The rules did not get in the way, particularly. They sprung from reason and logic. When he had first been forced onto the run, he would find it hard to wake up some days, and so he would make up a mental timetable, cast a light of ordinary and average life onto days that were not as ordinary and average as he would have liked. And now he had reasons to wake up and eat properly, reasons that were not based on fear alone, because fear was a motivator but no matter how hard you ran to get away from it, it clung. 

The TV was turned to eleven when Bruce's phone buzzed, skittering across his bedside table and nearly falling on the floor. It made him think of mosquitos up in the corners of his room, of setting up camp too close to nests of small insects - of unwanted things, in this quiet room with its volume-eleven television. But it was a text, barely a harbinger of disequilibrium at all, and from Tony, whose presence trod light enough to be silent in this room: hardly a mosquito or any other unwelcome thing.

_Basement lab?_

*

The elevator floor was cold beneath Bruce's feet, and tiredness made him feel like a patchwork person, with stitched-on limbs that moved like he was drunk. It was almost entirely silent, the noise from the city outside dampened by soft mechanical whirring. He liked it that way. Just before the elevator fell to a gentle stop, he ran one hand over the glowing steel buttons next to the doors. Sometimes the aesthetics of the Stark headquarters made him feel like he was in a gallery.

The workshop was all harsh edges stroked with soft light. The bank of computers at the far end of the room were showing their screensavers - all of them in a neat circle, dreaming in synchrony. Tony was sat at a desk with a roll of paper spread out in front of him, grey grid spiderwebbing across it, Tony's own darker pencil drawings overlaid on top: a study in monochrome. 

"Hey," Tony said, his voice low and brief and automatic. "Would you come here for a second?"

Bruce heard the quiet click of the elevator doors shutting behind him. A fanfare. He crossed the workshop, sat on the stool next to Tony. 

"I need you to look over this."

"What? Is it something important?" Bruce glanced at the plans Tony had sketched out. 

"Not particularly. But just tell me if I've made any...glaring errors, or even tiny little mistakes that won't show themselves properly until the prototype stage. Just anything. Anything wrong."

"It looks fine from here." He pulled at the paper, dragging it closer. He wished he had thought to bring his glasses. "I don't know why you're asking me this. It seems pointless."

"Why is that?"

"Because there won't be anything wrong." Bruce smiled and pushed the plans back. "And even if there was, you'd probably ignore me, right?"

"Where did you get such a low yet startlingly accurate opinion of me?" 

Tony rolled up the paper and placed it near one of the computers. Bruce stifled a yawn, wondered if this was it: a pointless journey down to look over plans that were nearly meticulous. He stood up again, swayed a little, and wandered over to the end of the desk.

"Wasn't really a low opinion if I said you wouldn't have got anything wrong," Bruce murmured.

"I'm-" began Tony, and tapped on the desk, as if thinking of the right words, or as if nervous, which was something that he struggled to outwardly express - it was as challenging as a foreign language, and so there was rarely any hint of it in his actions. "I have been having trouble sleeping. And it's not good for design work. Not a...lot of help. So I thought you could make sure I wasn't making any disastrous errors."

His eyes were big and wide - deliberate, probably, he could do things like that deliberately - and Bruce felt embarrassed for even accidentally making him offer information that was personal and hence uncomfortable. Some secrets felt like they had been stolen. This one, though, he couldn't really tell about. 

"You're not sleeping? There's stuff you can take for that, you know."

"I know. I'm dealing with it. I'll be fine."

"Whatever you say. I just think...I can prescribe you something. Or there's other methods. People tend to ignore things and think they'll go away but that's rarely a sensible solution."

"Yeah, well. I don't want your horse tranquilizers," said Tony. And of course he was tired and not just the sort that made your eyes a little dry but the kind that sent something thick as cement through your veins, the kind that numbed your brain, and Bruce didn't mind that he was being snappy, but still, when Tony exhaled and said "That was rude," in a measured voice it was not unwelcome. He stepped forward, evidently heading back in the direction of the elevator - to sleep, or to at least abandon the appearance of being awake.

Bruce's rules were not just for the television. He forced himself to save certain amounts of money every week - cash, banded-together piles of it - in a bag in one of his drawers, just in case. If he missed the precise amount by a few dollars, then real and looming disaster threatened his mind: this will all go wrong, and you will not be able to cope. And with Tony, too: don't spend too long with him. Go and see other people at least twice a week. Go out by yourself. Don't rely on him. Allow yourself to be pleasantly surprised every time he does a favour for you. Small rules and restrictions that made perfect sense, used perfect logic. 

The problem with obeying these instructions that seemed to almost exist outside of himself was that they occasionally felt like obeying some sensible stranger, and from that sprang the feeling of a debt owed to him - a reward for toeing lines drawn with thick and permanent paint. 

So when Tony put one hand just below the crook of Bruce's elbow, and did not pull him forward so much as hold him still in order to kiss him, it was something not entirely good nor entirely bad, but it was something. It contravened every careful second-guess. And when, a second later, after Bruce's breath was his own again, and he could still hear the humming of the machines over his pulse but only barely, the world did not end, he smiled at the entire pantheon of negated possibilities his mind had spun.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for a prompt on Tumblr about Tony suffering from insomnia.


End file.
